Gevlon, if you're reading this, I hope your brain can comprehend this shocking fact: You're way more social, and way more stupid, than you think. You're also lazy, deceptive, and really should give up on writing in English. But maybe your abysmal writing and comprehension helps boost other ESL bloggers by making them look better. My writing is certainly not perfect, but I also don't write a blog dedicated to self-glorification and calling everyone else an idiot. I only do the first of those two (but you're special, so I make an exception). Want to sing about being special?

"Tobold mentioned several times that his wife found leveling in WoW too easy/fast. He also writes that 'if somebody applies the typical hardcore effort on a task not requiring that sort of effort, the task becomes trivial'. It doesn't take a genius to combine the two: if leveling is too easy for his wife, she must apply hardcore effort to leveling, so she is a no-lifer."

This assumes that the task required a hardcore level of effort to become trivial, as opposed to being trivial in the first place.

"When you see someone with no gems at all in his several sockets, you see a moron and slacker, someone who was too lazy to ask anyone "what is this socket thing" and too unintelligent to figure it out alone. Alternatively he can lack basic human skills like literacy so unable to read the above clues."

You can only prove moron or slacker (within game context), not both. A slacker could know exactly what to do but be too lazy. A moron could be too stupid to figure it out or get help. Both conditions are not required and so the conditions cannot be simultaneously proven by this one attempt at proof.

"The sad fact is (what Tobold refuses to accept) is that many fellow human beings are too stupid (or illiterate) for a video game. However the fact is that as IQ has the mean of 100 and normally distributed, the amount of 90 IQ people is equal to the 110 ones. The amount of 80 IQ is equal to the amount of 120 ones. The amount of 130 IQ people is equal to IQ 70 ones. And IQ 70 people are officially retards."

The point of a game is fun. If they are having fun, then they have the required intelligence. But if such people cause you a great deal of anguish, perhaps you're the one with the problem.

"On the top of that, we have functional illiterates, kids who strongly believe that studying and thinking is lame while brute force is cool, people who can't understand the servers language and others who lack such basic skills. While they are not medically retards, they are just as hopeless."

Kids are dumb; it's part of being a kid. What's next, mocking babies for being illiterate morons who cannot even shit outside their clothes?

One last note: Not caring is not the same as being lazy or stupid. Why am I not currently curing cancer? Because I don't care. I could make contributions toward the cause with a bit of education and effort in the field, but I don't care enough. I care about other things, such as the rotten state of politics and the tax code. Big surprise, I'm starting a master's program in public affairs.

Similarly, someone can enjoy a game, such as World of Warcraft, without caring a whole lot about it. In fact, for them it might be stupid to care more or to put in more effort. If they are having fun and would not gain much fun through more effort, why should they? It would be self-defeating to do so. Perhaps they care about something else and apply effort toward that instead. We don't know and it would be stupid to assume one way or another, though perhaps it would be human to give the benefit of the doubt.

Okay one more last note, maybe the problem is that they are all being just as anti-social as you wish you were. They are having fun and don't give a damn about the effect they have on others. Sounds rather anti-social to me. Maybe it's been backward all this time: they aren't social so they do whatever they want, while you are social and get very angry over what other people do, then you lash out with baseless attacks in hopes of gathering followers to reinforce your views, all of them equally ignorant of facts or logic.

P.S. Azuriel is a pretty cool person on the internet, he says "For as much as you talk about science, you seem to leap to illogical, unproven conclusions at the drop of a hat" and doesn't afraid of anything.

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comments:

I must say his post in general was bad form and lacked concise logic. I couldn't really tell what the point of the insult cascade was, but I'm glad you called him out on it.

I really don't know why he has such a following, no offence to all of the people following him and commenting there, but there's a serious lack of class when you throw ad hominem attacks at someone's wife who you don't even know.

Gevlon is .. perfectly unable to reflect upon himself. He is following the ape instincs as much as anybody. In contrast to most people, however, he doesn't relize it.

His answer as to why he tries to make WoW gold instead of real money always is: "Because in WoW I can learn so much."Go, figure ...

In the past, he had some good post every now and then. But since he only writes about WoW, and in recent months his own guild and raid, I removed him from my list of blogs some time ago. I skipped his blog all the time, anyway.

I've feel like that reading almost all his posts (which I've given up some time ago), with very few exceptions where he probably hit a nail for me that he didn't intend. in general his reasoning is unreflected, illogical and full of holes while delivered with a self-confidence and self-righteousness that make him appear very ignorant. You can only really get Gevlon's articles if you decide to think in his direction without questioning. it's based on so many lopsided assumptions that you have to just accept those in order for his articles to work.

I've commented on his blog once or twice; pointing out that he was just as social or even more social than the morons and slackers he detests so much, because there is ample sign of it in many of his posts hehe.... he never replied to that. you know what they say, things we hate passionately in others, are usually things we hate about ourself and can't cope with. Gevlon too is just human. :)I've always found his posse 'effect' rather fascinating.

I've never been able to get behind Gevlon. I tried a few times, but funnily enough, every post I read made me think *he's* a moron. He's an elitist, no more, and I can't be arsed with people who look down on other people like that so I don't.

The problem is a lot of people try to "cure cancer" but can't be arsed with "a bit of education and effort in the field" (even though comparing curing cancer with playing wow is a bit weird imo).What's funny too, is the assumptions people make about Gevlon, being "self-righteous" etc. and having "followers". It only shows you don't understand what his blog is all about and you decided it's not worth trying to understand (and thus ridicule it to preserve your ego).Note that this comment has nothing to do with whether I agree or disagree with the referred article from Gevlon (in case you assumed I did, because I'm obviously a "follower").

I don't assume that Gevlon is self-righteous, I see that all evidence points toward that conclusion. Pardon the use of wikipedia, but let's try it "Self-righteousness is a feeling of moral superiority derived from a sense that one's beliefs, actions, or affiliations are of greater virtue than those of the average person."

It doesn't help that he's horribly inconsistent and does not acknowledge it. One day he's saying morality is made up and only dangerous and counterproductive are measurable, but then he's setting up pet collectors as the equivalent (moral?) of pedophiles, despite pet collectors causing no harm while pedophiles clearly do.

He might seem inconsistent, because he's performing a social experiment using wow as a tool. Formulating hypothesises, testing them, watch how people respond to them etc. You shouldn't come to his blog looking for answers, but for measurements, calculations and thought-provoking conclusions/arguments.If you're offended by his writing style, well, your loss I guess. Though I'd rather suggest you give his guild a try (it's EU though) and see for yourself.

I'm sorry, do you have a better analogy for the concept that we devote energy to those things that we care about, don't for those things we don't, and attempting to measure the wrong activity will result in a completely inaccurate assessment of laziness?

His experimental standards are an insult to science. Attempting to use games as a measure of human behavior is risky, since there is that huge problem of not knowing how much any given person cares about the game, or even how much the population on average cares. He ignores this problem by assuming that "doesn't care about a game" means "lazy", which is a moronic assumption.

He did have a brief time when he sort of had something new to say, but he's long fallen into a habit of attacking random people for no good reason.

I read Gevlon's blog and appreciate the time he puts into his crazy theories. He has his "flavor" much like Nils has his earnest pessimism and you have your over-the-top rambling style.

Sure, he's sometimes wrong, hypocritical and biased (like all of us). Some of his posts are incoherent. Quality varies. But there are also some interesting ideas that I wouldn't have thought of myself. And I do think his social engineering projects are interesting even if they don't prove what he thinks they do. He's a gadfly and as long as you don't expect otherwise, he's alright.

@Caramael: What burden? Last I checked we form our own raids and need never be burdened by anyone we don't want. The ungemmed person in Orgrimmar causes me no harm. Sure, there can be problems with random heroics, but I'd blame Blizzard, not the players. They're doing what they've always done and it is Blizzard who thought it made sense to throw everyone together.

"You shouldn't come to his blog looking for answers, but for measurements, calculations and thought-provoking conclusions/arguments."

Bwahahahahahahahahahaha.

...wait, you were serious? This is the bugger what put up a graph what showed there was more raiders on some servers than actual players. When some buggers pointed out what the data was clearly garbage and therefore useless, his response were that his numbers still counted 'cause the old-time greeks done figgered out what the earth were round. He is a moron what handles valid critcismizings by stickin' his fingers in his ears and shouting "lalalalalalala". If that provokes yer thoughts, well, I's glad that ain't me problem.

@Klep: I agree. And the goal of his guild is to be able to pug without being forced to play with unwanted players. And it seems to be working. If Blizzard could be convinced to stop catering to the "not caring" he wouldn't have to put so much effort into running an "asocial" guild.

@Ratshag: I see you prefer "Bwahahahahahahahahahaha" to "lalalalalalala".

I've yet to see him have to put in any effort that any other progression guild would require. Maybe the problem is he's too obsessed with "socials" and wastes a lot of time trying to weed them out rather than figuring out basic human interaction, such as not being scared of the world "hello".

I'd never heard of the dude, I seem to recall his name from a few places but nothing concrete. So after reading this I tracked him down, and after a few posts I realized he reminded me of this raving lunatic if a bum who tried to steal my Poweraid while I was walking down the Vegas strip last weekend. It was a hot day, his reasons made sense....and in another life maybe I would have forgiven his attempted theft. But his plan and overall execution... well... they were found wanting. Thus, he needed to be crushed.

Yes, Nils. You often come across as a glass-half-empty sort of person who wants, earnestly, to see it filled up. You spend quite a bit of time dreaming up ways to fill the glass or analyzing how it got so low. You seem dissatisfied on many fronts.

Saying that I probably won't elaborate is a perfect example: you care enough to say something but don't expect a satisfying answer. It's cute.

Having thought about it for a few mintutes, anonymous. Nope you're wrong ;)

If I were a pessimist I wouldn't have a blog about how to make better MMORPGs. I would instead complain how stuff is bad and there's no way it ever get's better.

It's true that I look at the glasses that are half-full. But I do that because the full-glasses are boring. There are a million things the industry does right with MMORPGs. Probably more. To list them all would take forever.

I do occasionally explain what WoW did right: The stylized graphics, the technical part, the seemless world, the classes. God, there's so much more! Really, you can't say what WoW did right without comparing it to another game. Why is WoW more fun than a pieve of empty space? Erm .. too many reasons to list ..

Moreover, if you want to improve things you look at what's broken, not at what's working well.

A side-effect of this certainly is that my blog makes me look dissatisfied. If I were a pessimist I would assume that nobody understands why that is. Fortunately I am not: I think most of my readers understand that you need to analyse what doesn't work if you want to think about improving MMORPGs.

So, after all Gevlon's ranting about no gems means yer a moron, today he invites us fer ta look at the armory pages of the buggers what got they's first heroic Halfus kill. They's all "properly gemmed and enchanted" he says.

So I does.

One of the tanks, bugger named Orosei, done be missing three gems and about five enchants. Now, I's just a simple Orc from Durotar, but I's pretty sure that ain't what the little dude meant by "proper". Obviously Oro sneakified in and got the job done, so go him, but Gevlon's earned hisself another servin' of mockery. So I mocks.

@CaramaelYup, I laughs at the laughable. But I also back up me laughs with real facts, and don't pretend the inconvenient ones ain't there.